Timeline

This timeline is
limited to events associated with the steady erosion of personal and intellectual
freedoms. For a more complete listing of events, see The Holocaust Project's
Timebase.

Year

Events

1930

9/14:
107 National Socialist deputies are elected to the Reichstag (20% of
the vote), making the Nazis Germany's second largest party. Social Democrats
remain the largest party in the Reichstag, Germany's Parliament.

1931

9/12:
Nazi gangs in Berlin attack Jews returning from synagogue.

1933

1/30: Adolf
Hitler appointed Chancellor by President Paul von Hindenburg. The
Sturm Abteilung (Nazi party private police, also known as "Brown
Shirts") celebrate Hitler's accession to power with a torchlight
parade through Berlin. Violence breaks out all over Germany between
the Sturm Abteilung and communists.

2/1: Under
pressure from Hitler, Hindenburg orders the dissolution of the Reichstag.
New elections are called for March 5, 1933.

2/4:Law
for the Protection of the German People: this law restricted demonstrations,
freedom of speech, freedom of press, and ordered the confiscation of
literature considered to be dangerous to the state.

2/5: All
Communist Party buildings and printing presses are confiscated.

2/24: Nazi
police raid the Communist Party headquarters in Berlin and claim to
have discovered plans for a Communist uprising. Formerly private armies
of the Nazi Party, the Stahlhelm (Steel Helmet), the Sturm Abteilung
(SA) and SS are officially granted auxiliary police status.

2/28: The
Nazi party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter accuses communists
of a plot to seize power. Law for the Protection of People and the
State abolishes the following rights: free speech, free press, sanctity
of the home, security of mail and telephone, freedom to assemble or
form organizations and the inviolability of private property. This law
also cleared the way for the Nazis to put their political opponents
in prison and establish concentration camps.

Sometime
in March: Librarians Wolfgang Herrmann and Wilhelm Schuster publish
the first attack on "un-German" literature in the professional library
journals, entitled "Erklärung und Aufruf" ("Clarification and Entreaty").

3/3: Hitler
(speaking in Frankfurt): "I don't have to worry about justice; my mission
is only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more."

3/5: Election
creates the Third Reich. The Nazi party has a majority of Parliament.

3/6: The
emergency decree For the Protection of the German People restricts
the opposition press and information services.

3/9: The
SA sponsors anti-Jewish riots throughout Germany.

3/11: "Reich
Ministry of People's Enlightenment and Propaganda" is created by
law; it is to be headed by Josef Goebbels.

3/20: The
first concentration camp is established at Dachau near Munich.

4/1:
Hitler imposes a nationwide, one-day boycott of Jewish businesses, physicians
and lawyers. Armed SA men are deployed to block the entrances to Jewish-owned
shops and stores. Signs are posted in English implying that Jewish claims
of persecution are false.

4/7: Two
new laws are passed: The Law for the Restoration of the Professional
Civil Service is which gives the state authority to dismiss all
politically unwanted persons from Civil Service jobs; university and
library personnel were especially hard hit. The Law concerning State
Governors deprived the German states their traditional jurisdiction
over cultural and educational affairs.

4/8:
A memorandum to Nazi Student Organizations proposes that "culturally
destructive" books from public, state and university libraries be collected
and burned. --Steig (1992): 92

4/13:
The Deutsche Studentenschaft (German Students' Association) begins their
cultural war by posting their "Wider den undeutschen Geist"
("Against the un-German Spirit") posters all over Germany.
The virulently anti-Semitic poster lists the ways they intend to "cleanse"
German language and literature.

4/25:The
Law for Preventing Overcrowding in German Schools and Colleges is
declared, limiting "non-Aryan" admittance to institutions of higher
education to 1.5 %.

4/26: The
Gestapo begins it's state-sanctioned reign of terror.

5/2: All
independent and Socialist trade unions in Germany are closed down and
dissolved on Hitler's orders.

5/5:
Cologne: University students burn books on Judaism or those written
by Jewish authors.

5/6:
Berlin: 80 members of Nazi student organizations and Sturm Abteiling
(SA) raid the Institute for Sexual Research. In less than an hour, they
gathered nearly half a ton of books, pamphlets, and teaching materials
to be burned at the May 10th book-burning.

5/10:
Berlin: Goebbels organizes Nazi student organizations and SA troops
to ransack public libraries and the library of the Humboldt University,
and burn the books at the Opernplatz. Goebbels speaks before the crowd
about the harm that "un-German" literature does to society.

5/16:
Librarian Wolfgang Herrmann publishes his "Principles for Sanitizing
Public and Lending Libraries" in a professional librarianship journal.
It contains one of the earliest lists of authors and titles targeted
for removal or destruction.

5/18:
Heidelberg: "Students" conduct a book-burning on the university
campus, preceded by a torchlight procession through the town. By this
date, burnings had also been conducted in Frankfurt, Göttingen,
Cologne, Hamburg, Dortmund, Halle, Nuremberg, Würzburg, Hannover,
Munich, Münster, Königsberg, Koblenz, and Salzburg.

5/22:
Berlin: Nazi secret police (Gestapo) raid public and private libraries
and confiscate 500 tons of Marxist materials, including works by Karl
Marx, Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxembourg, as well as that of Bolshevik
leaders. The confiscated books and papers were pulped and auctioned
off to paper mills.

6/22: Hermann
Goering issues a decree instructing all government employees to spy
on each other.

7/5: The
Catholic Center Party dissolves; the Nazis become the only active political
party in the Reichstag.

7/7: Several
German universities announce that Jewish students will not receive their
degrees.

7/14: The
creation of new political parties is prohibited and The Law on Plebiscites
is passed. All political opposition to Nazism is now outlawed and it
becomes the one and only political party in Germany. Under the Law
on the Revocation of Naturalization and Deprivation of German Citizenship
of Jews, German citizenship may be taken away from people designated
as "undesirables."

7/20: According
to The Holocaust Project, "a number of contemporary historians
consider this to be the day Hitler's dictatorship of Germany actually
began." Germans are required to use the Hitler salute for general
greeting.

7/21: Nuremberg:
Hundreds of Jewish store owners are arrested by the SA and paraded through
the streets for hours.

7/25: Passage
of the Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring.

7/29: Professor
Fischer, the new Rector of the University of Berlin says in his inaugural
address: "The new leadership, having only just taken over the reins
of power, is deliberately and forcefully intervening in the course of
history and in the life of the nation, precisely where this intervention
is most urgently, most decisively, and most immediately needed. To be
sure, this need can only be perceived by those who are able to see and
to think within a biological framework, but it is understood by these
people to be a matter of the gravest and most weighty concern. This
intervention can be characterized as a biological population policy,
biological in this context signifying the safeguarding by the state
of our hereditary endowment and our race, as opposed to the unharnessed
processes of heredity, selection, and elimination."

9/22: Reich
Chamber of Culture Law is created to control all literature, press,
radio, theater, music and art. "Non-Aryans" are restricted from contributing
in these areas. Josef Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda will direct these
efforts.

10/4:Law
regulating the function of editors of newspapers and periodicals.

10/23: Martin
Buber and 51 other Jewish educators are fired from their positions at
German universities.

12/18: Another
Nazi decree bars Jews from the field of journalism and its associated
professions.

1935

6/5: Book
reviewing by persons and organizations unaligned with the Nazi party
and government is restricted. Goebbels' Chamber of Culture is to "coordinate"
official literary criticism.

9/15:Law
for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. This law, one
of the notorious Nürnberg laws, excluded all Jewish and Jewish-related
authors, publishers, editors, etc. from the cultural life of Germany.